Doesn't seem that hard to speculate. * Attention is scarce. There's lots of competition for it. * Revenue sources are scarcer. People expect to pay less (or n

Doesn't seem that hard to speculate. * Attention is scarce. There's lots of competition for it. * Revenue sources are scarcer. People expect to pay less (or not pay) for recordings than they used to. Part of this is because the industry dropped the ball and let non-blessed outlets set expectations. But that by itself would be manageable -- under a pay-for-recording system with loose digital restrictions, people might be able to get a hold of free music, but they know the difference between being patrons and mooches, and some critical mass that likes what they hear will choose the former. Streaming services make this fuzzier, and buffet streaming services like Spotify could actually outright kill this: they aim not to replace radio but recording collections in general (and replace recording revenue with fractional stream plays that are orders of magnitude smaller). But they make users think they're participating patrons. * Performance is a risk-heavy, often capital intensive, and non-scaleable way of getting revenue. * Telling musicians to support themselves with T-shirts and tchochkes is another way of saying they should have a job besides making music (which is fine if you actually believe that, I suppose, but it's another way of saying you don't care if they spend more of their time refining their compositions/performances).